Deciphering Traces of Poetry
by Viburnum
Summary: Chihaya has quit karuta and decided to stop interacting with Taichi and Arata. Now in their 20s Chihaya has become a better student and tries other things. She knows she will resolve things with those two eventually. In the meantime Arata attempts to have a relationship with Shinobu and Taichi rebellious shifts interests.Will Chihaya play karuta again? (some crossover)


**Deciphering Traces of Poetry**  
>Chapter One<br>in Remission

Do you think at times you can hit a wall?

Maybe, you weren't even aware there was a wall. Its so indiscreet and discrete from consciousness that's it's existence materializes like how would see the construction of a house getting materialized. That's how she saw it and she believed that no longer should be so swept away by her own passions and wishes, and desires, to be red like an autumnal river was not always good for her. If the river wades in different crimsons it is best after all a bloody mouth with a purple cloud becomes more or less scenery if you never learn to empathise with yourself. It was not abuse by other; it was as if the wall was an obstinacy of herself: a lack of focus for herself that resulted in her getting paranoid and preferring a complex over herself.

Her name was Chihaya Ayase and she was a mathematician now. It was very difficult for her because she was always a misdirected student yet now she had volumes of confidence in herself and also a stamina that she can muster into other elements.

Her college undergrad days were a myriad of many failures and successes. She first started in Japanese Literature. One of her proficiencies was poetry as the poets she played her sport on. However, then she started hating it. It reminded her too much of a solitary history that she had wanted to forget because historiography as she later learned was a study of history in different angles more like how artists paint different angled things or a photographer captures the same light in different angles.

She had taken a hiatus from studying and worked with her father. Her mother had been very sad about her. Chitose, her ever selfish sister, had not been. Finally, she thought that the "fan" Chihaya would come back. In an episode of epic proportions Chihaya slapped Chitose right on her left cheek with her ambidextrous left hand. Chitose numbed with shock and anger looked on as Chihaya told her off for being nothing but a pretty face all the time and so full of herself. Chitose then succumbed with rage and both sisters had a physical fight of punches and hair-pulling and name-calling inadvertently separating them for now close to seven years.

Ironically, in some signs of tacit far off correspondence Chitose did help a bit with the financial drudgeries of education for Chihaya. Chihaya had worked for almost four years after dropping out of university once as a, ironically, dresser's assistant in a store of boutique class pompousness but also a nice beauty. She had gained money and decided to go and study mathematics at the same university. It was a large struggle concerning that Chihaya had to convince her board of interviewers that she wouldn't run away this time. She gave a genuine speech of having problems in her life and that she wanted a different path.

Now Chihaya was twenty-six years old and a sophomore at university. She had stopped playing karuta ever since she had turned twenty.

In that time she had with some ceremony stopped talking to two important people in her life, Taichi Mashima and Arata Wataya. She did also limit her interactions with Kanade Oe and to some extents Tsutomu Komano. Though, contrarily, her friendship with Yusei Nishida was not so deteriorated. They had long conversations and he was still playing karuta but had decided to study Japanese Literature, her rejected field, in an adjacent university. Kanade, Taichi and Tsutomu were apparently peers in their own university. Arata studied at a nearby one to them. Of course, you can't avoid people if you are in a particular field in the same city and she could care less because she wasn't as exuberant as before. At least not in front of them.

Studying geometry and topology interested her. She liked that even if she could connect it with karuta's iconographic cards she still did not measure in different. But she also like calculus because to her it was math's greatest asset for her to somehow dismantle chronological time. Never really a self-reflective person she had started to look more into herself after she had become twenty. There were hard decisions. There were times she got really depressed and locked herself in her room for hours, sleep almost over twelve hours and also failed appearing in many places. She had partial hikikomori for a while finding solace in her bedroom and not going out at all. Also hardly letting any light except fractures from the window somehow enter at day and night forgetting what time was what and only look throw small peering tears that night or day was done or beginning.

She got exhausted chasing after people. She got exhausted always being the understanding one or even the selfish one. Yeah she had been pretty selfish with Taichi. At times she had been a total bitch to him. Not because she wasn't romantic with him but she was asking him to shoulder her dreams never asking him if he thought karuta made him sad because she like a bitch always talked about Arata. That was not good friend manners. To always stretch out another's shadow so much that you start trivializing your other friend's one. At one point, she had embraced Taichi and cried out all her apology and asked for genuine forgiveness. Taichi, being supportive as always, being in tune, forgave. Then asked for forgiveness for also not paying attention to her much at times and just going off with also what he wanted.

Then he gentlemanly kissed her forehead —

— it was an act of respect and of coming now into terms.

With Arata there had been a spat. A bit of a verbal one. She confronted him on his inability to cope with life. She addressed that ever since youth he initiated nothing and that even show in his karuta style. Angered Arata had said he always gets his cards because he can see them and allows himself to know them and was not a speed conscious person like her. Chihaya agreed surprising Arata and she said that he had the proper instincts he didn't have proper proactive instincts and that like karuta cards in a box he likes being folded and unfolded by factors that are not always him or his wishes.

For one of the first times she saw Arata cry but in rage. He asked her to leave. They talked a bit after that but there was no true reconciliation. Taichi8 felt this presence and to the contrary he was not overjoyed. What immaturity had maturity had somewhat took down. He respected Arata as a person, rival and friend and a person who got him and Chihaya. He thought Arata was being too stubborn because in some form he actually agreed with her. Yet he also thought Chihaya can smooth things over. Chihaya frumpled: "I can't always initiate everything."

Arata was in regret. He didn't know what happened but Chihaya stopped being communicative then he and Taichi saw her having manic breakdowns. He understood it partly because he had to some level gone through this stage when his grandfather was ill but now he could not understand why she was so sad. Then Chihaya just stopped talking a lot and he did not know how to say sorry or what to say if it mattered.

In her room, Chihaya does some maths for class. She is excited that she has doing well in quizzes. She suddenly thinks of the history of the Chihayafuru poem and its etches in her: "I guess this stream wants to find its branches, it's other red rivers, for a passion can never be only a force. It has to be deep as the roots of a river..."

**A/N:** I read Frog-kun;'s story of the a bit painful story about the unmanageable life of Chihaya, Taichi and Arata and realized that the only "manageable" way they can come to somewhere if Chihaya takes an active role in how she interacts and how she looks at herself. This is gonna be a partly long story. Even if Chihaya does end up with somebody in both manga, anime or in this story know that your OTP can still happen if Chihaya acts differently in your fic and if the other characters too. Because at this moment Chihaya is equally compatible with both guys but love needs extra dimensions. It's not necessarily compatibility it also has to be respect and understanding with Chihaya and the two maintaining their respective individualities even if they redeem/change certain aspect of themselves. So this was Chapter One and I will write Chapter Two ASAP Thank You for reading :)


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